• Contact Center Outsourcing
• Articles

Combining Inside Sales, Customer and Technical Support into One Profitable Operation

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

While most companies are aware of the reasons they need contact centers – they are expected by customers, and without customers, companies can’t survive – few companies are thrilled to run them. They are costly, complicated and problematic, requiring a constant hiring stream (thanks to high turnover) and a continual purchase of new solutions and equipment in order to keep up with customer expectations.

Many companies are finding new ways to run the contact center that can solve the most pressing problems: meet customer expectations while turning the call center into a source of income. For some companies, this has involved combining the contact center function with the sales and service functions. By cross-training call center employees, inside sales teams and technical support employees to create a wider “total customer support” center, companies can pull the income from extended cross-selling, upselling and warranties into the call center and spread the wealth around, according to a recent article by Judy Philbin on Business2Community.

There are a number of upsides to this scenario. By creating more knowledgeable, better trained service, sales and support employees, companies are providing employees with more opportunities to use professional skills and be more effective, a scenario that helps retain employees better than hiring low-skilled employees who are highly likely to leave after only a few months. Companies can also share support technologies between all three functions, using it more cost-effectively and gaining economies of scale. Finally, having all three functions together simply offers customers a better and more complete customer experience without the need to be transferred back and forth across departments.

The challenges, however, are also considerable, and they start with the resistance many companies will experience from employees who may not consider themselves call center agents or sales people.

“To most service reps, the idea of selling is less than appetizing, primarily because they aren’t properly prepared and, therefore, lack confidence,” wrote Philbin. “Additionally, they may not understand the benefit to themselves or the company. This lack of buy-in can lead to dissatisfaction and turnover, with employee losses as high as 25 percent. Moreover, when untrained service reps try to just ‘start selling’ without any training, they will inevitably rack up bad customer experiences. That’s two strikes, because now you’ve lost both employees AND customers.”

Philbin recommends robust training as the way to overcome these issues, helping customer support, sales and technical support employees understand the bigger picture and how their contributions can help. It’s also critical to monitor the customer experience during the process to ensure it’s not suffering. Once these hurdles are overcome, however, companies can find themselves selling more, offering better support, building stronger customer relationships and boosting the company’s profits.